Silence

She was what was known as a "particular friend" in convent vernacular. An older nun, she was both teacher and inspiration to Nancy Manahan, who was at the time in her first year at the Maryknoll Missionary Sisters' Novitiate near St. Louis. Because talking was allowed only during restricted periods and preferring the company of one nun over the others was forbidden, Manahan said she often had to confess to two transgressions--breaking silence and having a particular friend.

Prodded by an ultraconservative Catholic group, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has criticized Friday's scheduled speech at Georgetown University by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Although Sebelius favors abortion rights, the "sin" that incurred the archdiocese's displeasure was the Obama administration's proposed rule requiring insurance coverage for contraception for employees of religious hospitals and educational institutions. Because Sebelius' actions "present the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history," the archdiocese suggested, students at the Jesuit-affiliated university shouldn't be able to hear her speak at an awards ceremony for its Public Policy Institute.

When bread is scarce, corpulence counts as beauty; when garbage dumpsters stink with wasted food, slenderness is prized. Small wonder that in our noisy civilization we should speak so longingly of silence. But most of us, most of the time, do not really desire silence. Something in us recoils from an utter absence of sound. The composer John Cage famously spent some time in a sensory deprivation chamber; he did not enjoy himself. Silence and noise have both been used as interrogation techniques.

No place like home Re " A prodigy works to aid others in Mexico," March 8 Kudos to Andrew Almazan. He is quoted as saying: "There are many opportunities here in Mexico, in work and in education; we just have to go out and find them. " Almazan just told the world that things aren't as dire in Mexico as many illegal immigrants who are now college-educated in the U.S. would have us believe. You read about the graduates who mow lawns as landscapers because they can't legally get a job in the U.S. doing what they went to college for. Enter Almazan, 17, a director of child psychology, saying that there is plenty of opportunity in Mexico.

Even Silence Has an End My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle Ingrid Betancourt Penguin Press: 530 pp., $29.95

Test proctor Chae Su-beom knows the drill. Twice on this all-important day, for a seemingly interminable half-hour at a time, he is required to stand completely still. No coughing, gum-chewing, breathing heavily or even making eye contact with his exam-taking students. Female minders face additional prohibitions: No excessive makeup or perfume that might give off a distracting scent. No high heels that could go clicketyclack on the linoleum floors. Today, across South Korea, 650,000 high school seniors will face the most crucial evaluation of their young lives: the national college entrance examination.

A couple of months ago, I woke up early for my usual workout. I pulled on running clothes and shoes, fastened my hair back and reached for my iPod. Instantly, my stomach clenched as I looked down at the angry red color indicating the battery was dead. How was I supposed to go for a 5-mile run without Fergie, Gwen and Justin urging me on? Heading out into the hot Southern California summer sans music, I braced myself for a horrible workout. Yet as my body began warming up, I noticed something startling.

Re "Moment of Silence in Schools Endorsed by Senate Resolution," Feb. 5: Ah, come on, Senators--give us teachers a break! Change "one moment of silence" to at least one hour. HELEN CHROSTOWSKI South Pasadena

I think it was very insensitive of KTLA to cut to a commercial during the Dodgers' opening game (April 28) when a moment of silence was being observed for the victims in Oklahoma City. Everyone should have had a moment of silence to remember the tragedy whether they were at Dodger Stadium or just watching the game on TV at home. Joyce Fleshman, Arcadia

Alan Cheuse's review of Arturo Azuela's "Shadows of Silence" (View, Sept. 27) left some rather obvious questions unanswered. First, a minor point. Is Azuela related to his illustrious predecessor, Mariano Azuela? Second, Cheuse calls the book "murky." However, most Mexican novels of recognized merit, like Ingmar Bergman's films, are murky. See, for example, "Edge of the Storm" or "Pedro Paramo." SCOTT JACKSON Irvine Azuela is the grandson of Mariano Azuela, but it seemed less than kind to refer to this in my relatively brief review of "Shadows of Silence," since I found the book so lacking in clarity of image and narrative drive.

The call from President Obama came on Friday morning, and he wanted to know if Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law school student who had been called a “slut” and a “prostitute” by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, was OK. As much as Fluke remembered what he said, she recalled how he sounded. “He was so kind,” she said in an interview. “I was just very impressed by that.” Fluke, 30, was raised in rural Pennslyvania but has lived part-time in West Hollywood for the past five years.

Dead, solid silence. That was about what Bill Haas heard when he made a 45-foot birdie putt on the second playoff hole Sunday to win the Northern Trust Open at Riviera Country Club with a dramatic flourish. It's not that Haas is an unpopular golfer. It's just that Haas' beautiful birdie denied Phil Mickelson a second consecutive tournament victory. Haas beat both Mickelson, who a week earlier had shot a closing-round 64 to win the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, and Keegan Bradley in the playoff, and the crowd reacted as a group of 5-year-olds might when told that Santa Claus didn't exist.

For months there have been repeated calls from Supreme Court watchers for Justices Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan to recuse themselves from the healthcare litigation to be argued before the court in March. The controversy heightened in December when Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in his year-end report, argued that not only should Supreme Court justices decide recusal issues solely for themselves, but that some ethical rules that apply to all other federal judges should not bind the justices.

By his own admission, Park Jung-geun has long been an Internet wiseguy, a young photographer and blogger with a cyber chip on his shoulder whose favorite target for satire is the North Korean government. For months, his Twitter profile picture showed him with a near-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand, standing in front of a red-starred North Korean flag. Using the handle @seouldecadence, the 23-year-old re-tweeted posts fromPyongyang's Twitter account he deemed particularly ridiculous.

The special commission investigating allegations of abuse inside the Los Angeles County jails is discussing the possibility of allowing jail deputies to testify anonymously. Some commissioners are considering the idea as a way to combat what the sheriff's independent watchdog described as a code of silence that exists among some jail deputies that has prevented investigators in the past from getting to the bottom of some abuse allegations. One commissioner, the Rev. Cecil Murray, said in an interview that he would even consider partial criminal immunity for deputies who admit involvement in a crime.

On June 6, 1924, two men set out from a camp set at 23,000 feet on Mt. Everest. They were George Mallory, who, at 37, was already one of the world's most accomplished climbers, and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, a 22-year-old Oxford graduate with little climbing experience. They walked out of the camp, vanished into the mists that surrounded the peak, and were never seen again until Mallory's frozen body was found in 1999. In his magnificent, if perhaps overlong, new book, "Into the Silence," Wade Davis tells the full story behind this almost mythic story, imbuing it with historic scope and epic sweep, perceiving the quest to conquer Everest as an emblem of Britain's damaged nobility and infatuation with heroic failure.

Jockey Patrick Valenzuela, who won the 1989 Kentucky Derby aboard Sunday Silence and won more than 4,000 races in 33 years, announced his retirement Friday. His agent, Tom Knust, said Valenzuela, who recently had his gall bladder removed, was concerned about health and weight issues. "He thought now was a good time to retire," Knust said. Valenzuela, 49, won 4,333 races and 15 riding titles in a career that began in 1978. He rode seven winners in the Breeders' Cup. He also has endured substance-abuse problems that caused the California Horse Racing Board to suspend his license several times.

Ludovic Bource | "The Artist" There was, of course, a bit of a history lesson that French composer Ludovic Bource embarked upon while working on "The Artist. " Some of the touchstones for director Michel Hazanavicius' silent film about the end of the silent film era were clear, such as "Sunset Boulevard" and the music of the late film composer Franz Waxman. Yet Bource also immersed himself in the work of early Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and classical masters such as Johannes Brahms.